Broken Translations
by Merwholocked628
Summary: The TARDIS translation circuit is broken, and the Ponds have just discovered that their friend the Doctor can't speak English. In short they have a problem. (There was an odd editing error which I fixed sorry! Everything's back to normal now though! Well, as normal as you can get with the Doctor.)


**Hi guys! I'm back with another one-shot! And this time it's DOCTOR WHO! I do not own Doctor Who (Oh how I wish I did!) Enjoy!**

"Sweetie you shouldn't touch that!" River warned as the Doctor tinkered with some wires on the TARDIS's console.

The Time-lord rolled his eyes and flipped his floppy brown hair as he worked. "This is my ship I know exactly what I'm-" There was a large spark and the sound of frying electronics. The Doctor muttered something under his breath.

The woman smiled and cocked an eyebrow leaning against 'Ol' Girl' "You were saying?"

The Doctor cocked his head at her and gave her a questioning glance, he opened his mouth to speak but what came out wasn't English, it sounded more like he was singing in a tenory far away language. River's eyes widened, her mass of curls swayed as she shook her head slightly. It looked as though she couldn't tell if she wanted to laugh or scream, instead she just stood there staring at the Time-lord. Just then two figures came racing into the control room.

"What was that?" The ginger woman said in a scottish accent, pulling her arm through her leather jacket which she had thrown on in under two seconds. The man beside her gave the Doctor a 'are you okay? You look like you're having a stroke.' look. The Time-lord had gone quite pale and the TARDIS console was supporting most of his weight, his mouth was wide open and his bow-tie had gone quite crooked though he made no move to fix it, in fact, he hadn't seemed to notice that two people had entered the room and jumped when the woman spoke.

The Doctor turned to them, shaking a little as he did so and spoke again in the beautiful foreign language.

"Erm..come again?" The ginger woman said raising an eyebrow.

River broke out of her stupor, sighed, and rolled her eyes. "Amy, Rory, our genius friend here

broke the TARDIS's translation circuit."

The Doctor looked puzzled at the foreign tongue River was speaking in and you could see the gears turning as he tried to work out what she said.

"You mean he can't speak normally?" Amy asked cocking an eyebrow in disbelief.

The Doctor cocked his head and after a few minutes of thinking said something that was probably along the lines of; 'I can speak just fine thank you very much, it's you who are talking funny with all that harsh sounding gibberish.' He gestured wildly and looked very annoyed.

"Ermmm what?" Amy asked.

The Doctor cocked his head and they all gave him a few moments to figure out what Amy had said. He huffed in exasperation then grabbed a pad of paper and a pen, quickly he scribbled down some circular nonsense and handed it to Amy to read.

Amy pushed a hand through her red hair and handed it to Rory. "Here, you're a nurse maybe you can understand the Doctor's handwriting."

Rory studied the paper, even turning it upside down to try and read it much to the Doctor's annoyance. It was beautiful calligraphy but even so it was just a bunch of circles linked together in what looked like diagrams of the inner workings of several different clocks and Rory couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Finally River snatched the paper away from him and pulled out her own pad, muttering to herself as she did so. Finally after what seemed like a million years she stepped back and studied whatever she had just written chewing on her pencil. She handed the paper to Rory who was stunned to see she had translated it, letter by letter until it read:

YOU-SPEAK-ENGLISH?

Rory let out a bark of laughter. "Yes we speak English." River held up a hand for him to stop then took a few minutes to translate it for the Doctor. The Doctor read what she had wrote, nodded and said something that was probably 'Thought so.'

"So, you can't speak properly? Like without the TARDIS translating you can't speak English."

The Doctor said something in Gallifreyan and angrily straightened his bowtie, he then wrote down something for River to translate. Once she figured out what it said she smacked him hard across the face.

"Write something nice." She said her voice dripping with a silent _or else._

Although the Doctor probably didn't understand what she had said he backed away from her nodding hastily. Soon he wrote something else down and River handed the English version to the Ponds.

I-SPEAK-PERFECTLY-FINE-THANKYOU-VERY-MUCH-IT'S-YOU-TWO-THAT-ARE-TALKING-FUNNY-SOUNDS-LIKE-SOMETHING-DIED- (_Doctor!) _-WE-NEED-TO-GET-TO-THE-ENGINE-ROOM-SO-YOU-CAN-GO-BACK-TO-SPEAKING-GALLIFRAYEN-LIKE-NORMAL-COME-ALONG-LAKELETS (_I think our dear Doctor meant ponds, bless.)__  
_

Rory had to bite his tongue to keep himself from mentioning the fact that they were speaking like they normally did and he was the one they needed to fix while Amy snickered at 'Lakelets' and nodded. "Okay Doctor, where do we go?"

The bowtie wearing Alien gestured for them to follow and sprinted out of the control room and down the ever twisting hallway of the TARDIS occasionally stopping to read the signs and plaques on the doors.

"Does he not know where it is?" Amy asked River curiously.

"The TARDIS likes to change the rooms around a lot so no." River replied.

"How does he read those?" Rory asked. "They're in English."

"Are they?" River questioned. "Check again."

So the nurse did and found they were most certainly not in English. They were in that odd clock gear script that the Doctor had written the note in.

"Is this Gallifreyan?" Rory asked as the Time-lord stopped to read another.

"Yes, it is. Beautiful huh?" River replied.

The Doctor suddenly looked excited and pointed to the door they had most recently stopped in front of. He spoke rapidly in his native language as he turned the doorknob practically bouncing up and down. All three people behind him expected to find the engine room, but it wasn't it was somewhat like a walk in closet. The Time-lord grabbed a leather jacket that was a bit too big for him, pinned a stick of celery to it, shoved a fez on his head and walked over to a little table to grab a paper baggie off it which he offered to everyone in the room. There turned out to be sweets inside, Jelly Babies to be exact. Then he walked out of the room and continued sprinting down the hall as if nothing had happened.

Amy and Rory both turned to River for answers who shrugged and gave them her best 'I have no bloody clue' look. Soon the Doctor got to another door, this time it was a heavy steel one with what appeared to be a caution sign written entirely in Gallifreyan. The Time-lord rolled his eyes at it and immediately sonicked the door open.

Everything appeared to be in working order as they stepped into a room with bronze pipes and bits and bobs (things like cell phone chargers, typewriters, and hair brushes) welded into the walls. But the Doctor walked straight to the back of the room where a little circuit, so tiny one would overlook it if they hadn't known what they were looking for, was sparking and sputtering uncontrollably.

The Time-lord knelt by it and, holding his sonic screwdriver between his teeth started fiddling around with it, shooting glances and glares at River as if daring her to comment. She wisely did not. A few moments, hissed Gallifreyan curses, and sonicking later the circuit had stopped sparking and the Doctor looked satisfied.

"Can you lot understand me?" He asked and when they all nodded he clapped the sleeves of the leather jacket he was wearing covered his hands so the clap was more of a muffled 'thwap, thwap' "Brilliant!"

"So you're back to talking English then?" Amy asked.

"Nope." The Doctor said cheerfully. "You're talking Gallifreyan."

"Are you going to explain the jacket? And the celery? And the lollies?" Rory questioned, raising an eyebrow.

"Nope." The Time-lord said popping the 'p'.

"Come on at least the celery!"

The Doctor just smiled and sauntered out of the room.

**Hope you all enjoyed.**


End file.
